Arthur Middleton Young (November 3, 1905, Paris, France–May 30, 1995, Berkeley, California) was inventor of the Bell helicopter, as well as a cosmologist, philosopher and author. He founded the "Institute for the Study of Consciousness" in Berkeley in 1972. Young advocated a process theory, which is a form of integral theory. These theories attempt to integrate the realm of human thought and experience with the realm of science so that the concept of universe is not limited to that which can be physically measured. Young's theory embraces evolution and the concept of the great chain of being. He has influenced such thinkers as Stanislav Grof.

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Arthur was the son of Eliza Coxe and Philadelphia landscape painter Charles Morris Young. He was interested in developing a comprehensive theory of reality from an early age. He felt that to acquire the intellectual tools needed for such rigorous study, he should first develop an understanding of mathematics and engineering. With this decision he was following a career path similar to that of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who was a mathematician before he developed the first process philosophy. Thus after graduation from Princeton University in 1927 Young searched for a suitable invention to develop. In 1928 he returned to his father's farm in Radnor, Pennsylvania to begin twelve solitary years of efforts to develop the helicopter into a useful device. Young married Priscilla Page in 1933.

Young had become profoundly disturbed by the development of nuclear weapons at the end of the World War II, and like a number of other very forward-looking and independent thinkers decided that humanity needed a new philosophical paradigm.

In August of 1946 Young recorded in his notes the idea of the psychopter— the helicopter as the "winged self", a metaphor for the human spirit. By October of 1947 Young felt his work at Bell was complete, and he turned to the next phase of his career as a philosopher of mind. He was divorced from Priscilla in 1948 and later that year married artist Ruth Forbes (1903–1998) of the BostonForbes family (and a great-granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson). In 1952 they organized the Foundation for the Study of Consciousness in Philadelphia, the forerunner of the Institute for the Study of Consciousness.